[The sweetness in breathing]

Her face couldn't find mine as I snuck through the door; out of the white hallway, lightbulbs eco-friendly and into her blacked hospital room. Had her eyes have been open they would have lingered around the room, but they were closed, heavy with sick. In my red thigh-length jacket I was bundled against the winter; buttoned to the throat, hands heavy in my pockets, a throbbing in my chest when I remembered her last personal request that had come from this very room only two weeks ago. Just two weeks ago we thought she had a fighting chance.

"Now don't you cry, Megan," she said when she still had the strength to sit up in her hospital bed, its tan plastic railings covered in emergency buttons, in red and blue squares arranged in a scattered pattern.

"Don't you cry, hear? You're not aloud to cry over this," she said when she could still deliver orders in her stern, authoratitive voice. Just the sound of her voice made me want to cry.

But this time, this visit, she wasn't talking. She was barely seeing. Her hands lurched in twitches during her half-dream state, her defined chest cavity rising and falling unevenly, its shallow rattling deafening against the silence in the room.

I watched the snow fall outside, watched it gather inches on the roofs of houses below the eighth story hospital room; watched it pile skillfully, balancing on electrical wires, watched it burry the tombstones of the ancient cemetary below me. From her window I felt the entire city was mine to control, that each pedestrian was a part of some kind of story I was playing out, under my own narration. That car, stop. That man, scrape ice from his volvo windshield. That woman, hurry up her uneven, city home front steps. That eleven year old, run in front of oncoming traffic. (As the narrator, I didn't even need to hold my breath for him.)

I watched the snow collect, the city quiet itself under the early darkness, for over four hours until behind me came a sound of movement under sheets.

I was still wearing my heavy jacket, though no part of me was cold, no part of me was warm. My body temperature was the one part of me completely at ease. Completely content. Managing somehow to cross the room to her side, I heard her try to speak.

"Oh, my red bird," she called me, completely delirious.

"No, it's me, Megan," I said, smiling to her the same way I smilied at customers at work.

"Yes," she said, her voice straining. "My red bird," she seemed convinced so I brushed it off as side effect to her newly aquired insanity.

But something forced me into a brief memory: I was no older than six, standing on her white cement doorstep, my right hand lifted, clutching tightly the iron railing. Truly, I had been dressed completely in blue.

She opened the heavy white front door, its seasonal decorative wreath bouncing slightly, and looked down at my little blonde head.

"Oh! You're my little blue bird today!" she cried, and hurried me indoors...

My chest heaved heavier than before and I felt almost guilty for not remembering right away. I unbuttoned my jacket, desperate under the sudden swelling heat in my neck.

"Yeah, yeah I'm your red bird today," I said, sitting down at her side in a chair equally as tan and uncomfortable as her bed looked. My feet could hardly reach the floor unless I sat on the edge so I did, and I held onto her hand until she fell asleep again, forcing myself to smile each time her eyes flickered open.

[She would have been a legend with or without that kind of a song]

Four years ago I exerted all my physical strength and gripped the wooded pane in my palms, pushed it up, opening the century old window against the late October air. I expected it to be colder than it was, to burn the wet in my eyes. But it was warm. It blew over my face, massaging my features, its late night city scents catching in my nostrils. It tempted me, and I breathed it in deep, held it in my lungs for some time; gave it time enough to swirl through my insides, to properly feed my brain.


I looked out my friend's appartment window on Orange street and realized the size of it was more than forgiving for my body to climb through. One foot, now the other. Four city stories up, it couldn't hurt, I was sure. No, the air was comfortning, welcoming, even urging. It's scents, it's feel was all too famililar; took me to places inside my head so vivid I didn't need to close my eyes to see them. And most vivid of all was the sound of a guitar ringing my favorite compilation of chords and wild notes, becomming more complex with each day of practice, with each hour of creative input. He knew his sound would find me, that it would call me across towns and down roads and out of the protection of my childhood home. He knew I would follow that song anywhere.

Below me the sidewalks were completely empty, cars had deserted their parallel parking spaces and I remembered my seven block alone walk home. Trash bags sat clustered in patches down the street and I figured it must be trash night. I swung my feet, they were bare and the air clung to them, particularaly between my toes where my feet were warmest. The swinging breeze cooled them off tremendously, and I realized for the last fourteen minutes I had been picking at the white rubbery paint that had layered on the ancient windowsil. I rested my head against the pane and let his song take over me again. Let myself find my favorite part, the part where the tune completely slowed more than half time, and his strumming changed, dragged almost, up the neck of the guitar, hitting all the right notes, making every inch of my body ache in its beautiful longing sound.


I longed for something, too.


I told him, "I'm not as clever, boy, I'm just not as pretty," and he knew I was right. He knew there were people and lifestyles more exciting, more beautiful than I would ever be. He knew I was right, so he kept on, his song reaching me countless years away.


And I wonder where the last four years have gone, because I've done nothing but try to stop them from happening. I wonder where the last nine years have gone, because I've done nothing but try to write about them, pathetically. The closest I have come to uncovering, to reliving the lost is in revisiting places that have been developed and in looking for people busy with new pasttimes.


I've changed too, I want to tell them, but nothing for the better. We have all gone downhill.


He has given up everything wild about himself for an ordinary way of life. She has done something similar, and I have done nothing but watch and compare their words and actions to ones they had done and said years ago. And I long for particular clothes and a kind of happiness I had only with them; and a certain kind of summer smell and a scent carried only through air. And when I sat four stories above the uneven city pavement I smelled it, luring me. It hooked me through the lip and pulled me outside of my friend's window, and for a second I expected to fall years into history. But a new guitar song broke the one inside of my head.



I twisted my torso around to see Dustin stroll casually in through his bedroom door, his own guitar strapped over his shoulder with his ridiculous crooked grin and I recognized the pull that was keeping me from where I wanted to be, and I promised him I would not go quietly.

I should be writing about more important things.

I should be writing about Connor's death. I should be writing about the slow and painful deteriation of my childhood caretaker.

I should be working out the uneven patterns in my life.


But its like I said once before, I'm not as clever, and I'm just not as pretty.

[It was nothing like I thought dreaming of him would be like. There were no dazzling smiles.]

I was outside, in a forest of never-ending tree trunks, all tall and thin, impossibly reaching toward the sky. Though under a thick canopy of trees, there was still plenty of sun light. It spilled through the holes in the leafy roof above, and lit up the ground around me. I wasn’t alone, either. To my right walked a boy, slender like the trees. He had strong limbs; his fingers held tight to mine while we walked effortlessly, dodging tree trunks and stepping lightly over fallen logs in a sort of airy-dance. Our bodies twisted playfully with each springy step, and I felt something erupt inside of me. Violent vibrations leaked from my core, trickled all the way to my fingertips and every other limb on my body. I felt his laughing vibrations echo mine, although we created no verbal sound to disturb our surroundings.


I was content there in our singing place, and looked up at him. I wanted to register his personal details to what was easily becoming my favorite memory. But I couldn’t look away from his face; featureless, it was unrecognizable but calm and completely captivating though I had never seen it before. He had no name I knew of. I was more in love with this serene creature than I ever imagined I could be with a human I knew.


He looked down at me, a mouth suddenly appearing and smiled, his lips quickly pulling back, exposing every one of his teeth in a flashing, modest grin. My eyes moved rapidly, skillfully over the hallow smudges where his eyes should have been, his cheekbones, his nose, his jaw line. Nothing was familiar as I hoped it would be, but I was glad, content in our stare-lock, as we continued our harmonious walk through a forest I had never seen before.
We followed no path but knew where we were going as if our journey had been predicted; as if our happiness was foreseen, and that it was scheduled to end now.


We stepped from the bright wood onto the shoreline of a lake, one so huge it had tiny waves breaking in a quick rhythmic pattern on the stony earth. We walked toward it, never hesitating as the sky grew progressively more overcast, darkening the shadows on his body, under his eyes. Still, clothed and feeling the cooler air now, we walked right into the water which almost immediately swelled to our waistlines. Under my feet I could feel the cold ground, slimy wet sand with pebbles rolling as I shifted my feet. Had I been in my waking state, and had this been a real lake, I would not, for sure, allow my feet to rest on the floor. But I was sleeping, and the sickly feeling below me didn’t bother me at the time, so we stood still, side-by-side, hand-in-hand.


There was no one around for us to talk to. There were no critical movements made toward one another, no speaking or even breathing. Waist deep in the cool water, our clothes swayed loosely in the light currents around our bodies. I don’t know long we waited in the water, but it was time enough for me to feel uneasy in my watch along the forest line of trees that seemed to take on a deep purple or magenta color the longer I stared, strained my eyes to find movement. There was none. We were utterly alone in the approaching darkness, rapidly covering everything in almost complete black.


It was during this abnormally still moment, covered in the dark dingy grey of approaching doom, that a tiny, naked baby-doll sized body dropped from the sky. It moved slowly through the dark shadows and I sucked my air in sharply, extending my hands to find the body was just beyond my grasp. I recognized her at once. The baby looked like a doll I had wanted as a child that was filled with water to create a heavier, more lifelike feel; she was supposed to be more real. She fell just beyond my grasp and landed with no sound of a splash when breaking the calm water’s surface in front of me.


I spoke for the first time. “The baby!” my voice was alert, a surprise warning, and he glanced down at me when I removed my hand from his. His face was suddenly horror-struck, not calming me as it had before, but urging me with its worry. Still, I waited too long to look away from his featureless face.


When I plunged myself under the surface of the water, everything changed, morphed into a nightmare. The water was ice cold on my skin, and with my every downward frantic stroke it cut against my skin like long blade slices. Still, I kept trying. The once crystal water was suddenly clouded with dark, had become a bottomless pit filled with weeds that grabbed at my wrists and tangled around my ankles. I knew I had to breathe soon, but my arms kept up their frantic flailing, hoping to touch the rock hard body that had fallen, dead cold, from the sky in front of me. My chest ached now with not only worry but a burning sensation that came only with the lack of oxygen. I knew the moment I would decide to trade my search for air I would have no more hope, no more chance of finding the little stiff corpse in the deep water.


I should have been afraid of drowning, but I wasn’t. I should have been more afraid of bumping the icy, solid fingers than not finding them, but I wasn’t. I should have been more afraid of the fingers actually reaching back for mine in a single quick movement like a true nightmare. But I wasn’t.


In the endless pit below me, the only thing I was able to see was darkness and the legs of the boy who stood next to me moments before that still somehow stood tall and strong in the never ending pond depths. I reached for his legs, my last bubble of oxygen escaping, and I screamed a hundred times that I was drowning, that I was too weak to make it to the surface on my own, that I needed his strong hands to guide me to air as they guided me through the woods. But they never came. And somehow, when my mouth broke the water’s surface I saw nothing but his horrible sad face glairing down at me. This face was one I knew. This face belonged to Peter, and he looked at me with ruined features, his brow creased, pulled toward the middle of his forehead in a strained position. The perfect mouth that always gave me my favorite smile was cracked open, its corners pulled downward, as he exhaled. He saw I had no baby in my hands, that the expression on my own face closely resembled his, and when I reached for him to pull me from the water he only closed his eyes and turned his face heavenward to ignore my plea.



I woke suddenly, my entire body shaking in reaction to his defeated face, my left and right hands reaching for something aimlessly in my tangled sheets.